Bupa and Quinn screw the people

Take it

The Australian system i believe to be on of the best!

Policies are quoted on what they cover, not what age you are or if you are a smoker/non-smoker and nobody can be refused H.I

However if you do not get Private health insurance in the year you turn 30 a 2% loading is added to your policy every year you do not have health insurance. This is capped at 70% so if you just turned 65 and decide you need health insurance as your hips are starting to play up there is an added 70% on top of your premium. This helps health insurance companies from people joining health insurance then getting an expensive procedure done then dropping it. Also as most people who turn 30 get health insurance it eases the pressure on the public system.

However to help those who have had health insurance since they were 30 a rebate is offered as your age increases, those from 65-69 get a 35% rebate on there Private heath Insurance and those over 70 get a 40% rebate (paid by the government).

Also those who earn enough to have health insurance an do not get charged an extra 1% tax a year (a Medicare levy) this is paid by anybody over the $50,000 a year bracket without Private health insurance!

Its a great system that works and there is now over 30+ health insurance companies in Australia, all with affordable health insurance policies!

LostinBlanch

Well I'm with Flogen on VHI being able to cut their costs without continually ripping off all health insurance customers (theirs and customers of other healthcare providers who will have to pay to continue to protect VHI from competition).

I am not against risk equalisation per se, but using it to protect a de facto monopoly and shield it from competition, is nothing short of a scam IMO. We should examine other health insurance markets worldwide and pick the best of them, maybe something like the Australian one which seems to have both RE and competition. But of course that's too much like common sense for this administration.

Hotblack Desiato

lostexpectation wrote:

one thing I didn't know till I heard it last week on newstalk was that BUPA was mutual company...

So what?
If they're using excess profits from Irish consumers to subsidise UK premiums, they're not making an overall profit. Doesn't mean that cross-subsidisation can't happen.

kmick

Heres my take
1) Quinn takes over BUPA
2) He aggresively prices his BUPA offering.
3) He drives VHI out of Business within 3 Years
4) No equalisation needed

By the way if Mary Harney is so worried about equalisation why is she not introducing it in Car Insurance, House Insurance? Those poor companies who insure a lot of young drivers should get subsidised by the companies who have a lot of older safer drivers? Rollocks they should - this is an open market.

Why is Mary Harney protecting VHI - there is nothing in it for her apart from votes. And if that is the reason she is compromised. I used to like her but she has failed in health and now she is cracking under the presssure.

Hotblack Desiato

I get the distinct impression you haven't read any of this thread.

Health insurance isn't at all like car or house insurance - because of community rating. Everyone pays the same regardless of age or medical history.

So what you're really saying is that we should do away with community rating - in other words people will be able to afford health insurance until they get old or sick... just like the USA.

oldfecker

kmick wrote:

Heres my take
1) Quinn takes over BUPA
2) He aggresively prices his BUPA offering.
3) He drives VHI out of Business within 3 Years
4) No equalisation needed

why not jusy get rid of bupa/quinn instead ? why did we have to subsidise bupa in england ?. they took our money and left !!!!!!!!!

SeanW

ninja900 wrote:

I get the distinct impression you haven't read any of this thread.

Health insurance isn't at all like car or house insurance - because of community rating. Everyone pays the same regardless of age or medical history.

So what you're really saying is that we should do away with community rating - in other words people will be able to afford health insurance until they get old or sick... just like the USA.

Umm ... lots of young people have a very hard time with car insurance with obscene quotes over €4000/year not being uncommon. The only other alternative for a young person who can't afford that is to stay off the road.

Meanwhile, there are now medical cards for over 70s.

Hotblack Desiato

SeanW wrote:

Umm ... lots of young people have a very hard time with car insurance with obscene quotes over €4000/year not being uncommon.

That's not at all relevant to health insurance. The government has decided that it's in the best interests of the community if everyone pays the same for health insurance. If you want the same to happen for car insurance, write to your TD.

The only other alternative for a young person who can't afford that is to stay off the road.

But... in a few years they'll be older and the insurance will be cheaper, and not driving in their teens and early 20s isn't going to adversely affect their life expectancy (if anything it'll increase it.) Also drivers can reduce their premium by choosing less risky vehicles and by not crashing or gaining convictions.

Whereas once you start to get old or sick, your health insurance is rapidly going to become unaffordable without community rating, and nothing you can do will reduce it.

Driving is a privilege, and never a right.
Healthcare should be a right, and never a privilege. (that doesn't mean that we can't have a private system for those who choose to avail of it.)

SeanW

If you want the same to happen for car insurance, write to your TD.

That's the whole point: I DON'T want this to happen for car insurance because that would place a burden on people who dont make it, and there would be plenty of good, older drivers put off the road if they couldn't afford the community loading. I could never stand over making this demand. That's the whole point - this is a regressive stealth tax.

Whereas once you start to get old or sick, your health insurance is rapidly going to become unaffordable without community rating, and nothing you can do will reduce it.

Actually yes, you can reduce your liability by choosing the correct lifestyle, not smoking, not drinking too much, eating right, getting excercise etc.

On the other hand, all a young person can do is the things you say, but those only reduce insurance quotes from completely obscene to a little less obscene. Young people get screwed over for motor insurance, and now totally screwed over for health insurance.

Driving is a privilege, and never a right.

Yes, driving should be treated as a priviledge because Ireland has such a fantastic and extensive public transport system that runs with split-second efficiency and urban planning has been such a shining example of vision that noone actually needs a car ... oops, that's not Ireland ... Switzerland maybe. And when someone does wait a decade or so for their rates to go down to start driving, there is an efficient, fast system for good drivers to turn their provisional licenses into full ones ... oops, again not Ireland of the 60 week waiting lists for driving tests.

(that doesn't mean that we can't have a private system for those who choose to avail of it.)

Over 70s are guaranteed medical cards. End of. I agree that healthcare is a right but I think the focus now needs to be on fixing the public healthcare system so that a older persons medical card actually means something.

What we have here is just a stealth tax on young people that operates in a very murky way (is really just a subsidy for the VHI).

I don't disagree with paying for the needs of older people, what I object to is the method - it should be a transparent, primarily public system with any subsidy taken being based on ability to pay, i.e. general taxation.

This is nothing more than a regressive subsidy to the VHI and I'm glad someone's found a way around it. The only people being screwed here are the VHI, Mary H. and her hare-brained stunt.

stovelid

This may counteract Celtic Tiger orthodoxy but not all elderly people own expensive homes, or even homes at all. A lot of them don't even have private pensions, imagine that!

metrovelvet wrote:

There is nothing to stop the elderly from joining Bupa.

And how screwed can they be when they all get automatic medical cards, regardless of how much money they have in their pensions and property?

Ibid wrote:

Very hard to quantify, that. But it makes sense, who has the mortgages? Of course, over time we'll have more than our grannies, but they're the ones who own the houses and the like atm.

Hotblack Desiato

SeanW wrote:

Actually yes, you can reduce your liability by choosing the correct lifestyle, not smoking, not drinking too much, eating right, getting excercise etc.

You'll still get sick someday. Then what?

On the other hand, all a young person can do is the things you say, but those only reduce insurance quotes from completely obscene to a little less obscene.

True but that's a topic for a Motors thread.

Young people get screwed over for motor insurance, and now totally screwed over for health insurance.

Health insurance isn't remotely comparable to motor insurance. Not even close. There is no law that requires you to get health insurance. If you're young and you think it's too dear, then don't bother with it and take your chances. That game gets very unappealing from the 40s onwards though - long before the free medical cards kick in and anyway many people feel that the public health system can't be relied upon.

Yes, driving should be treated as a priviledge because Ireland has such a fantastic and extensive public transport system that runs with split-second efficiency and urban planning has been such a shining example of vision that noone actually needs a car ... oops, that's not Ireland ... Switzerland maybe. And when someone does wait a decade or so for their rates to go down to start driving, there is an efficient, fast system for good drivers to turn their provisional licenses into full ones ... oops, again not Ireland of the 60 week waiting lists for driving tests.

Yawn... totally irrelevant and missing the point

Over 70s are guaranteed medical cards. End of. I agree that healthcare is a right but I think the focus now needs to be on fixing the public healthcare system so that a older persons medical card actually means something.

So on the one hand you're saying that they have a medical card therefore they're sorted, but also that the public health system isn't great therefore they're not sorted after all.... sounds like a good argument for affordable health insurance for the elderly to me.

What we have here is just a stealth tax on young people that operates in a very murky way (is really just a subsidy for the VHI).

Because the VHI is the insurer which has inherited the older customer base - if it hadn't then there'd be no need for risk equalisation.
Oh and since when is a "stealth tax" something that you can choose to pay or not. You're being totally over-dramatic. If you don't like the VHI rates offered to younger people, don't bother paying them.

I don't disagree with paying for the needs of older people, what I object to is the method - it should be a transparent, primarily public system with any subsidy taken being based on ability to pay, i.e. general taxation.

That's what we are already supposed to have, but don't.
The public system would collapse altogether if those who choose to pay private health insurance stopped doing so and instead depended totally on the public system.
Life isn't fair, some people have more money than others, and in health as in other areas they will use their money to gain better service levels for themselves. We're not going to live in a socialist paradise any day soon.